A beautiful red cardinal! I had only seen them in photographs before my visit to Shelley's home in West Virginia! There was a freak Winter snow storm last night and today. Hopefully, the weather will be nicer tomorrow so we can do a bit of sight seeing.

I've been having a lot of fun here. Shelley and Mitchell are so wonderful to me. Shelley and I have been working on some beautiful art projects.

I fly home on Tuesday. I'll be sad leaving Shelley and will miss her terribly. But, I'll be glad to be home and with my Shawn.

Well, I'm off to do more beading! Have a great evening and Big Squishy Hugs!

The sign outside The Bead Monster shop in Morgantown, West Virginia. The bat on the necklace is available inside the shop - I just HAD to get myself one of them! I got all sorts of seed beads to play with. We did a bit of sight seeing today. Shelley did too much standing and walking so now her back is really hurting and is in spasms.

Tomorrow we are going to work on some craft projects! Yippie! And right now, I'm going to get my beads and play! Double Yippie!

Big squishy hugs!

Everyday is a Holiday is having a give a way! Go to their site and enter to win a wonderful little Cuttlebug! Watch the videos to get a great idea of what this little machine can do for you. I can only imagine all the fun that I'd have making embellishments for cards and mixed media projects. Go to this link and check it out!

http://everyday-is-a-holiday.blogspot.com/2011/10/who-wants-to-win-cuttlebug.html?spref=fb

The Animal in Me Doll Exchange

This is my finished Animal in Me doll. She is boxed up and ready to make her long travel to Australia. Shawn will take her to work with him and mail her from Portland, probably on Tuesday. I had so much fun making her. I'm thrilled that she actually turned out better than I expected. This was the first time I used a wool fiber for hair and then I wasn't sure how I'd get her hair finished. I'm not good at hair design. Not even doing pony tails! You can notice that the beak of the bird mask is brown in color. That's because I burned the sculpty clay. Oops! I was going to paint the mask, but I liked the brownish turning into the purple clay - so, it was left alone. This is also the first sculpty doll I've made using wire joints. It was an experiment that sort of worked. I can improve this technique and make it easier to do and, hopefully, make the joints move better. But, it was all new to me and fun to play around with.

Next Tuesday, I'll be on a plane and heading to West Virginia to visit my Most Perfect Sister and Bestest Friend, Shelley! I can't wait! We are going to have such a great time and drive her poor, poor hubby, Mitchell, insane! Hee hee hee! She has some wonderful plans for us to go shopping at Monster Beads, visit a Civil War battle field, and other places of interest. We also plan on finishing our journals for each other and begin our new round robin adventure. Next up will be dolls for us to dress and embellish! That's going to be a HOOT!

Well, I need to get busy around here. Lots to do and I've been lazy and not working on much of anything. So, have a great week and I'll yak at ya later!

Big Squishy Hugs!

Dragonfly toes. My Sissy Sandi found this poor fellow stuck in the window at Les Schwab's in Mt. Shasta. She told me about it, I took a photo of it in the window, then put my foot near it. It climbed right onto my toe and I was able to walk carefully to the door, open the door and away it flew to freedom. It was freakin' huge!

Our trip to California with Mom and Dad was stressful. On the way down, just outside the town of Mt. Shasta, the car's brake rotor froze. We made it to the rest area, and as luck would have it, a Les Schwab worker was there in their fix it truck. He checked the tires, determined it wasn't a flat (duh!) but couldn't figure out what was wrong with the car. He gave us directions to the shop and told Sandi to drive slowly and carefully. We get to the shop, and that's when they discover the rotor had frozen. They called a local business man, who owns some of the hotel/motels in the area to come and get us and take us to one of his places. We'd have to spend the night since it was close to closing hours. After dinner, Mom laid down on the bed and started having a burning in her chest. 911 was called and she was taken to the ER. Praise God! It was only acid reflux and not a heart attack! The hotel owner had left us his van for the night "just in case" we needed it. He was our Angel! The next day, after Sandi called Les Schwab 3 times to find out about the car - it was fixed and the person they sent to pick her up to go get the car never showed up at the hotel! - the 3rd time the office manager left the shop and came to get Sandi. We packed up the car and off to Black Bear Restaurant for a very late breakfast! We finally made it to Aunt Billie's and were able to finally get some rest. Not much, but some. We had good visits with Aunt Marian, Cousin Ron, Cousin Anna, Aunt Pauline, and Little Joseph. We always have a good time with Aunt Billie! Got to see Uncle Jose and that was very nice. He's still working hard on the ranch. Harder now that the owner passed away and the son is trying to run the place. The son doesn't know what he's doing or how to run the ranch and is creating more work for everyone.

Not much else to report at this time! I'm soon going to be packing my bags again to visit my Bestest Friend, Shelley, in West Virginia. This is going to be a blast!

Big Squishy Hugs!